The Dark Forest (Remembrance of Earth’s Past, #2)

by Liu Cixin

“If the public has placed its hope in Hubble II, then they probably won’t believe the enemy really exists until they have seen the Trisolaran Fleet with their own eyes.”

Don't look up

And then the man with the hammer was smacking Luo Ji savagely in the chest with a fierce blow that sent him tumbling to the ground

Wait what?

Mom, I’m going to be a firefly.

Open-mindedness, is what this is, and anyone who wants to do great things needs to be open-minded. Someone like you won’t accomplish great things.”

“Annihilation. That’s the highest respect a civilization can receive.

They don’t care, and that’s the height of contempt.”

“Wallfacer Luo Ji, I am your Wallbreaker.”

This is an age that has invented perpetual motion and can synthesize grain, but computer technology doesn’t seem to have advanced at all. Artificial intelligence can’t even handle personal finance.”

I believed in what Goethe said: ‘If I love you, what business is it of yours?’”

“If I destroy you, what business is it of yours?”

But no sooner had they appeared than the holes deformed and vanished as the surrounding hull melted under the heat produced by the high-speed impact and the ultrahigh temperature of the droplet’s trailing halo. The part of the ship that had been hit turned red-hot, and the redness spread from the point of impact until it covered half the ship, like a chunk of iron that had just been taken out of the forge.

The diabolical flight path demonstrated a space drive entirely beyond human comprehension,

In other words, this superpowerful light was indistinguishable from darkness in its effect.

The droplet, wrapped in this all-engulfing light, entered Nelson and was extinguished, plunging the battlefield into pitch darkness.

Carrying with them the entirety of human thoughts and memories, and embracing all of the Earth’s glory and dreams, they quietly disappeared into the eternal night.

The past was like a handful of sand you thought you were squeezing tightly, but which had already run out through the cracks between your fingers.

First, survival is the primary need of civilization. Second, civilization continuously grows and expands, but the total matter in the universe remains constant.”

“The universe is a dark forest. Every civilization is an armed hunter stalking through the trees like a ghost, gently pushing aside branches that block the path and trying to tread without sound. Even breathing is done with care. The hunter has to be careful, because everywhere in the forest are stealthy hunters like him. If he finds other life—another hunter, an angel or a demon, a delicate infant or a tottering old man, a fairy or a demigod—there’s only one thing he can do: open fire and eliminate them. In this forest, hell is other people. An eternal threat that any life that exposes its own existence will be swiftly wiped out. This is the picture of cosmic civilization. It’s the explanation for the Fermi Paradox.”

Silence is the greatest form of contempt,